A Hero at the End of the World by Erin Claiborne

seemed to be gloating about something.
    “What do you want?” Oliver asked flatly.
    “Is that anyway to greet the man that might have just solved your case for you?” Kaur asked with a smirk.
    “Oh, please,” Sophie murmured, going back to her reading, but Oliver shot up straight.
    “What are you on about?” he demanded.
    “I’ve been working on my case, you know, the one with the chickens,” Kaur said in an undertone. He patted the top of his file. “I found something that might help yours.”
    Sophie peered at them from over her book, suddenly looking intrigued. “What does an attempted human sacrifice have to do with chickens?”
    “Something
evil
,” Oliver said boldly. He paused before looking at Kaur. “Um, right?”
    “Something interesting, at least,” Kaur replied. He turned away. “Are you coming or not?”
    Oliver hardly had to think about it. He scrambled after Kaur to the lifts. The doors were nearly shut when Sophie slipped through, throwing Oliver an annoyed look.
    Once the doors had closed completely, Kaur swiped his ID card before hitting the button for the top floor.
    “We’re going to the Watch Tower?” Sophie asked, her voice lifting with surprise.
    “I thought a visual aid might help,” Kaur said.
    He winked at her and seemingly ignored the way she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Oliver glared daggers into the back of his greasy head.
    The lift climbed forty-one more stories, up to the hundredth floor. There was meant to be a team of wardens responsible for maintaining the air-pressure enchantments at a constant rate across the building, but Oliver’s ears nevertheless popped painfully. He rubbed the right one, grimacing.
    The bell chimed once they had reached the top. The lift’s doors slid open to reveal an empty, narrow corridor that led to a single closed door.
    “Are you sure we’re allowed to be here?” Oliver asked.
    “I’m a Second Class agent,” Kaur said dismissively. He waved them along. “Just follow me.”
    The door opened up to a winding staircase, which became narrower and narrower as it spiraled upward until they were forming a single queue, with Kaur at the lead. Once at the top, Kaur pushed open a second vault-like door and led them into a dark chamber. It was completely empty except for a single crystal sphere suspended in the center: the Closed Circuit Hlidskjalf.
    A chill went down Oliver’s spine.
    A wonder of modern magitechnology, the Closed Circuit Hlidskjalf was the reason for the confidentiality agreement included in every Home Office employment contract. Revealing its existence to anyone who hadn’t signed the agreement brought on swift punishment: a vicious spell that left its subject permanently mute, immediate summons to the disciplinary committee, and, unless there were some really good mitigating arguments, life imprisonment. Oliver had read that the Americans were on the cusp of creating their own version of the mechanism.
    Although Oliver had never even seen it before, since only agents at Second Class or above were given training, he knew the basic principle behind it: it was simple applied alapomancy. There were two types of enchanted mechanisms in the world: those that were dormant, whose power could be leeched from them, and those that were active and needed to feed off the magic of others. The CCH was an active device; in order for it to work, the user had to wake it up with a spell. Even from just inside the door, Oliver could feel it trying to suck in power, as though something inside of him were being pulled toward it. Unconsciously, he reached up and clenched his fist around his totem.
    The one design flaw of the CCH was that, as opposed to the sentries, who kept watch on the British public and reported crimes as they happened, the mechanism only projected an image of a scene after the fact. But unlike the sentries, it took snapshots of everywhere at once. It used a stonking amount of energy.
    Oliver stood just inside the doorway,